


One True Pair

by dark_roast



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-16
Updated: 2006-09-16
Packaged: 2017-10-12 13:33:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/125400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dark_roast/pseuds/dark_roast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logan, from an unusual point of view.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One True Pair

**Author's Note:**

> Rated G.  
> Logan; ensemble. A little bit of something different.  
>  **SPOILERS** : Very minor through "Not Pictured."

Almost immediately, the new ones became just as clannish as their predecessors had been. Unfriendly to outsiders, and suspicious of newcomers. They were the most favored. Everyone knew it. They did not associate with any beyond their own kind (even those nearby), unless absolutely necessary. Those farther away, well... the favored did not acknowledge the others at all, even when circumstances forced them together. For many years, the smallest among them were cast off, never to return. Then the castings-off stopped, and only the oldest were handed down with honor. Until the night disaster befell them all.

This was how Brownpocket told the story to Olive, while the two of them hung shoulder to shoulder in the dark. Brownpocket alone had survived the Great Burning, and Brownpocket alone had known the old ones. Even so, Brownpocket had not been worthy of their society. They had murmured among themselves in the darkness and Brownpocket had listened, not daring to make the slightest noise, lest they discovered him eavesdropping.

In this new place, the longsleeves would not associate with Brownpocket any more than the old longsleeves had in the old place, and Brownpocket was lonely. The oxfords spurned Brownpocket as little better than a tee shirt, and of course the tee shirts wouldn't talk to Brownpocket, because Brownpocket had buttons. The orange longsleeves started a rumor that Brownpocket was a spy for the two outcasts lurking in the very deepest corner of the closet, Argyle Sweater and Dip-dyed Hoodie. Brownpocket himself dreaded the thought of hanging next to those two. Each of them had only been worn once. Chosen, and then discarded. Brownpocket told Olive the outcasts had turned feral. Perhaps even mad.

However, the Boy was very organized. Brownpocket and Olive usually hung on neighboring hangers, and when the bedroom light clicked off and the Boy's breathing deepened, Olive had many opportunities to ask Brownpocket about the days before the Burning.

Olive was the newest longsleeve. He spoke with Brownpocket often, because he was lonely, too. The rest of the longsleeves had not accepted Olive as one of their own. Brownpocket's opinion (offered with a world-weary sigh), was that since Olive deigned to speak with a lowly shortsleeve, the longsleeves would never accept Olive. Olive didn't care. The other longsleeves were too full of themselves, anyway.

Olive's own story began the same way every other story began: with the Boy picking Olive from a rack. The Boy lifted Olive up, running his fingers over Olive's thick, soft cotton, his brown eyes narrowed critically. Then the Boy tossed Olive over one arm, atop six other shirts, carried them all to the fitting room, and dropped them on the bench. The Boy pulled Olive over his head, scowled at himself in the mirror, with his hands on his hips. He pulled Olive right off again. That was that, Olive figured. The Boy would leave him in the store. Another boy might come along. The Boy tried on the other four longsleeves and the two shortsleeves, and Olive alone ended up folded into a drawstring plastic bag, wrapped in tissue paper with a silver sticker to hold it together, riding home on the passenger seat of the Boy's truck.

On a morning soon afterward, the Boy took Olive off the hanger, yanked him over shower-damp hair, tugged down his waistband. And then the Boy grabbed both of Olive's cuffs and rolled his hands up in Olive's sleeves. Olive did not appreciate this. He was a good, sturdy shirt and he resented having sleeves like a straitjacket. The Boy took comfort from the gesture, though. And while Olive was a longsleeve, he was still only a shirt. The Boy had chosen him. Olive decided that having longer sleeves might not be so bad, if it meant the Boy wore him more often. He was afraid to turn feral like those shirts at the far edge of the closet. So he relaxed, and let himself stretch out of shape, the better to cradle the Boy's anxious hands.

The next day, the Boy chose one of the orange longsleeves. He especially liked the orange with the big 34 on the front, and the black stripes on both sleeves. Olive felt dark and dowdy in comparison to the orange shirts, but Brownpocket said the Boy had reached for brighter colors much more frequently before the Burning. Not so often now.

It seemed this was true, because the Boy reached for Olive very often. One day, the Boy stretched an arm over his shoulder and tore the tag out of Olive's back seam, ripping a hole just under Olive's collar binding that grew larger and larger as the stitching unraveled. The Boy was fond of worrying at the rip with his fingers during class, popping stitch after stitch after stitch. When he could stick all five fingers through the hole he'd made, he sent Olive away. That was the end. Olive was cast off. Handed down with honor, the way Brownpocket spoke of the old ones. This had happened much, much too fast. Olive missed the Boy, and his hands curling warm in Olive's sleeves.

The Boy had only sent Olive to the tailor down the street from the hotel, to have Olive's seam stitched back together. The moment one of the hotel staff returned Olive, the Boy tore the paper off him and hung him in the closet once more, running a fond hand over Olive's mended collar.

On another day, the Boy scooped Olive from where he lay on the floor in a wrinkled heap, sniffed him, and then without thinking, put him on inside-out. It was only for a moment, but now Olive understood the Boy from both sides.

The Boy spilled a beer down Olive. Two days later, a chicken burrito. A lot of swearing followed. The Boy threw Olive on the floor and kicked him underneath the bed with a gaggle of inside-out socks and a single sneaker. A maid found Olive the next morning and took him to the hotel laundry. When the laundry came back, the Boy was somewhere else. Another maid put Olive in the middle drawer of the bureau. He lay forgotten, and the tee shirts made fun of him. Oh, look at the proud longsleeve, folded in with all the shortsleeve peasants. Olive ignored them, too proud to dignify their jibes with a response. After several days the Boy thought to look for Olive in the drawer. He smiled and carried Olive across the room, to hang him in the closet next to Brownpocket once more, where he belonged.

There was a new longsleeve when Olive returned: Black Crewneck. This newest longsleeve was fond of telling the older ones how he had cost a great deal of money. Also, he didn't like having his sleeves yanked. The Boy rarely wore him, and this seemed to suit Black Crewneck just fine.

Then there was the Girl. Two Girls, actually. There were many girls, but only two who mattered. So Olive gathered from Brownpocket. The first Girl hung next to the Boy for a long time, and the Boy's hands fit into her hands, instead of into his sleeves. Then suddenly, the Girl was gone. Brownpocket didn't know where she was folded now. The second Girl was like the first. Both of them made the Boy unhappy. Olive was likewise unhappy, because he loved the Boy. (He kept this to himself; he knew even Brownpocket would call him stupid.) But, Olive had observed that when the boy was happy, he was more likely to reach for one of the shortsleeves than for a longsleeve, and so Olive felt guilty both when the Boy wore him, and when the Boy did not. One night the Boy gripped Olive's cuffs tight in both hands the way he did, and put his head down and cried, muffling his face in the soft nest of wrinkles that his elbow made in Olive's sleeve; and Olive knew the Boy did this because he didn't want his friend with the blue shirts to hear him. Olive came to understand that this was not the first time the Boy cried, nor would it be the last. Black Crewneck complained about it later, at length. Olive decided the second Girl was probably to blame, and that he didn't like this Girl.

On a night many months afterward, the Boy saved the Girl. The Boy wore a jacket and a tee shirt at the time, and so Olive didn't understand what had happened until much later, when the Boy held the Girl cradled in his lap. Olive's sleeves, stretched from countless rollings and tuggings, dangled over the Boy's fingers, and touched the Girl's hair. The Boy fell asleep on the Girl's couch. The tee shirt he wore over Olive was one he had bought the weekend before, and the tee shirt had nothing to say. Wakeful in this strange, sad new place, with the Boy snoring softly, Olive wished for Brownpocket. Perhaps, Olive thought, he had been too hasty in blaming the Girl for everything. She looked heartbroken. She couldn't possibly have a true longsleeve to call her own.

The following day, the Boy returned to the hotel room. He lived there alone. His friend had disappeared, though the blue and gray shirts still hung in the far closet. Apparently, they felt free to talk all the time, now that their boy had left them behind. So much so that Olive worried that the Boy would hear them. Olive's Boy tossed Olive onto the floor with the rest of his clothing, and when he came out of the shower, he looked down at his rumpled, sweaty shirt, and he chose a clean shortsleeve instead.

He did not wear Olive the next day. Or the next. Summer had come. Too warm for the longsleeves. The Boy reached for tee shirts, but he also chose Brownpocket many times; and the Boy laughed often, so Brownpocket reported. Olive missed the Boy. He missed the Boy's hands holding his sleeves. He missed how the Boy wore him even when he was wrinkled, or slightly smelly, or had something splotched down his front, with another shirt overtop to hide the stain. He missed the Boy hunting for him in the stack of his clean, folded clothes fresh from the hotel laundry, pulling Olive out to wear him before he wore anything else.

Olive hung in the Boy's closet with the other longsleeves, and waited for the seasons to change. When autumn did return, Olive hoped it would not bring back the Boy's terrible sadness and loneliness, only his desire to reach for Olive, and to tug at his sleeves. Olive hoped he and the Boy would be as close as they had been before.

After all, the Boy might stay happy from now on... but his arms would still get cold.

THE END

***


End file.
